[Info-vax] Micro Focus Merger with Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Software Business Segment

[Chris]

On 10/03/16 16:13, Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:

>
> Does this "pkg" approach work well with licensed software?
>
> OK, you could always install the compiler (or whatever) but then
> require an PAK registration also to have it actually work...
>
> Usually, the most work is to actually *buy* the compiler license
> (and finding someone to buy it from!), downloading the install
> kit is usually easy compared to that... :)
>
>

Most of the licensed software i've bought in the past has been
for Windows, but I guess there would be no reason why the package
system could not be used for licensed software on Linux or other
OS. It is what it suggests, a structured system to simplify
installation of add on software. It's quite smart as well, in that
it checks for dependencies on other packages, downloads
them and installs before finally installing the package of interest.
There's no reason in principle why the script that handles that
should not also patch or build some or all of it.

For Linux, most software seems to arrive via the package route,
though I have had to build from source on occasion, where a
package was not available, or a different revision was needed.
For FreeBSD, there is a similar package collection and also
a ports tree, which is much the same thing in source form. You have
the option at os install time to install the ports tree and OS
system sources, which makes it easy to modify packages, or OS kernel
as needed. In some ways, FreeBSD is cleaner and more low level than
most Linux i've seen. Less like Windows and more like a real OS...

Regards,

Chris